Posted on 09/18/2009 4:42:57 AM PDT by myknowledge
HONG KONG (Reuters) - One needs to look no further then the river that runs through Shangba to understand the extent of the heavy metals pollution that experts say has turned the hamlets in this region of southern China into cancer villages.
The river's flow ranges from murky white to a bright shade of orange and the waters are so viscous that they barely ripple in the breeze. In Shangba, the river brings death, not sustenance.
"All the fish died, even chickens and ducks that drank from the river died. If you put your leg in the water, you'll get rashes and a terrible itch," said He Shuncai, a 34-year-old rice farmer who has lived in Shangba all his life.
"Last year alone, six people in our village died from cancer and they were in their 30s and 40s."
Cancer casts a shadow over the villages in this region of China in southern Guangdong province, nestled among farmland contaminated by heavy metals used to make batteries, computer parts and other electronics devices.
Every year, an estimated 460,000 people die prematurely in China due to exposure to air and water pollution, according to a 2007 World Bank study.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Just shows to go ya, that communism trumps greenism in the pecking order.
Thus compounding the aging of the Chinese population: killing off relatively younger people.
NO cheers, unfortunately.
Maranatha.
I’d think the death stalks all ages.
* Cuyahoga River Fire
On June 22, 1969, an oil slick and debris in the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio, drawing national attention to environmental problems in Ohio and elsewhere in the United States.
This Cuyahoga River fire lasted just thirty minutes, but it did approximately fifty thousand dollars in damage — principally to some railroad bridges spanning the river. It is unclear what caused the fire, but most people believe sparks from a passing train ignited an oil slick in the Cuyahoga River. This was not the first time that the river had caught on fire. Fires occurred on the Cuyahoga River in 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, and in 1952. The 1952 fire caused over 1.5 million dollars in damage.
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1642
Communism really harms the environment.
Incidentally, I wonder if there is a way of identifying the “brownest” products that get to our shores from China. Wouldn’t it be a deep irony if the CFL bulbs that our own solons are pushing on us turned out to be a chief part of the problem?
Just waiting for the Free Trader Commie Appeasers to give their excuse on this one....nothing like a stupid explanation from someone who supports Free Trade with Communist China
Nothing new with Commies and pollution....they trashed the former USSR and Eastern Europe. No surprise in China
Ironic that all the Greenies are Commies...when Commies are the biggest polluters. And the Greenies blame the capitalists for environmental damage....when it is capitalists and westerners who saw the dangers of extensive pollution before any Commie did
Whoever thinks Communist China is not communist....needs to have their head examined. They still have Central Planning, labor camps, and lots of commie-produced waste
Who cares? All I care about is that I can buy a new hammer made in China (one of our most favored trading partners) for a lot less than the American one. What American one? Oh, that’s right. The American factory my father and brother worked at closed last year and moved to China. But at least the company is still owned by Americans. So far. /s
May God have mercy on these people.
Demand that if the whole world needs to cut its carbon footprint, then they need to do the same for this.
Cheers!
An alternative view is that business trumps green. The pollution is actually the result of green action.....the pursuit of the greenback.
Politicians seldom act, they react. This article is evidence of a reaction. The problems have grown to the magnitude requiring action.
I look for the massive hoard of $$ in the form of treasury bonds to be spent on Chinese infrastructure that will begin to reduce the problem.
Remember, American rivers were in similarly bad shape prior to 1970’s
INDEED.
AND ON US.
. . . . . . . . . We will have our own very dreadful fish to fry far sooner than most even alert people think.
The are competitive. It is easy to make money without labor costs.
And without having to worry about cigarette smoke half a mile away
China may soon have more committed Christians per capita than the USA does.
I know figure are problematic at best.
Personally, I already believe they have more authentic Christians than the total of the US population.
Environmental abatement would seem to be a good business to be in. A lot of that could sell to China. Though China has so much land it may find that a more practical solution is simply to move entire afflicted villages elsewhere.
Just because population so huge.
Population control is a hidden agenda of the Chicom government.
As you probably know, the CFL bulbs have mercury vapor in them, so the mfg plants are probably very contaminated.
Some TV show, maybe 60 Minutes, did a show about a month ago on computer recycling and tracked them from USA to China. The Chinese recyclers were burning them in open fires to melt valuables from them, very young children were doing this, and they had sores on them from the contaminated environment. The hidden cameras showed the worst possible condition there, much polluted water, sick children working, etc. I'm certainly no enviro-wacko, but you have to draw a line somewhere within reason. Communist countries are the worst polluters, not the US as the leftist nut jobs proclaim.
The next shoe to drop will be when China says they really don't need these American owners anymore, just the American customers. Profit margins can be increased if the American owners can be taken out of the equation.
That’s how they meet the gummit quotas.
It would not be nearly so bad if they were allowed genuine freedom because as soon as they could bring about a better situation they would. They would be able to balance dollars (or yuan) against quality of life at the point they personally chose, not that some bureaucrat chose.
Hidden schmidden, they make it no secret.
Half a million people are small potatoes in that insanely populous country.
More, . . . suffering forces one to seek authentic comfort and solutions.
THE LIVING GOD; CHRIST JESUS IS THE ONLY SOLUTION. HIS HOLY SPIRIT BRINGS ABOUT MANY MIRACLES IN THE LIVES OF HURTING PEOPLE IN CHINA WHO ARE DESPERATE WITHOUT ANY OTHER HOPE.
THAT
brings people to Jesus more than happens in the USA where everyone is still self-sufficient. That self-sufficiency is about to crash terminally.
I’ve never lived in Ohio but that fire sticks out in my mind because I just happened to be driving through there when it happened in the late 60s, I actually saw the Cuyahoga river on fire. It is something that is “seared” in my memory.
I’m not as nearly concerned about the manufacturing site as about where they mine for the mercury. And for other metals used in the circuitry encapsulated in the bulbs. The head story seems to be about a village nearby a river heavily poisoned by the effluent of mines.
Kind of like what Emperor obi One is working on in the US. Just get rid of those capitalist middlemen.
Poor nations struggling to catch up do a horrible job with the environment and human rights. If the left insists on pushing Cap in Trade, eventually they will get the opposite affect they desire and America will become like these parts of China.
100% true.
Communist/Socialist/Progressive/Liberal/Democrat/Obama/Acorn Utopia.
All a fantasy.
Cap and Trade is an inhibitor to the growth of a society in general.
Sear this in your memory—the river is so clean now, 40 years later, that people swim in it. Why anyone would make reference to this bit of history without updating what we have done since is beyond me.
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